Title: From the field to industrial product: Platform chemicals and materials from biomass
Date: 19 Jun, 2018
Place: Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima Campus

Presentation prepared by Andrea Kruse, Dominik Wüst, David Steinbach, Paul Körner, Dennis Jung, Gero Becker 

Abstracts: Fossil resources are limited and biomass is a valuable carbon resource.
Especially, if the preparatory synthesis work by plants can be used.   Examples are the production of the platform chemical Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and “n-doped” carbon materials.
HMF is a very interesting platform chemical, which can be transformed into other chemicals and consecutively to polymers.
This way e.g. a bio-based substitute for PET, called PEF can be produced.

At one of the farms belonging to the University of Hohenheim a bench-scale plant will be built-up to convert a lignocellulose, here Miscanthus, to HMF.
The Miscanthus grows also on one part of farm with marginal land. The idea is not to compete with food production; neither concerning the plant produced nor farm land.
Another on-farm concept bases on hydrothermal carbonization.
The hydrothermal carbonization of agricultural residues or other biomass types and the consecutive activation leads to interesting carbon materials.
These materials could be used to produce activated carbon, e.g. for hydrogen storage or the up-grading of biogas by carbon dioxide adsorption.
In addition materials for the use as electrodes in batteries or fuels cells, as well as supercapacitors can be produced.
Digestate based on manure fed biogas plants, is a very good feedstock.
With the Hohenheim process, MgNH4PO4, a good fertilizer can be produced, in addition to carbon material.